Hengeveld: Intel Xeon Phi an Enterprise of Discovery

The Intel booth at SC12 includes an amazing replica of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. In this special guest feature, Intel’s John Hengeveld writes that being part of the launch of the Xeon Phi coprocessor this week at SC12 was like something right out of the movies.

Compared to Sunday’s snows. Monday and Tuesday have been summer for us here at Intel.

We finally launched our Intel Xeon Phi products with a wonderful presentation by our Sr. VP Diane Bryant, done from the bridge set of the Star Trek Enterprise.

The Intel team has been working closely with end customers to get the first Xeon Phi systems up and running, including an innovative effort from Glenn Brooks from NICS to build up an extremely efficient system using Intel Xeon 5110P’s while also carefully managing Xeon power. The result was the #1 power efficient system on the Top500 list (2.44 GF/watt) ahead of Nvidia, AMD, and IBM’s BlueGene.

But to quote a line from Alice’s Restaurant; “That’s not what I came here to tell you about…came to talk about the draft.” Mariane Jackson, who you last saw with a massive beer in her hands in Hamburg, is a friend of mine at Intel has played a very important role in Xeon Phi’s development. She wrote something for the internal team that I thought is reflective of what we as an industry aspire to and dream of. Thought I’d share it:

As I sit on the Star Trek Enterprise Bridge set (yes, our event team leased the set for SC12), I wonder how much of what was imagined on this television series is going to be real in my lifetime. I have my wish list of favorite Star Trek musings that I hope to see be produced from the high performance community. I do know that even if my contributions may be small, this product line will lead to amazing discoveries by those visionaries. There is an army of people who have worked on this product, but before it gets pushed out the door I am part of the marketing and execution teams that have the privilege to put the pretty bow on it and say: “Here it is world. Create something wonderful!”

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